d hadn't found one yet, only plenty
tracks.

"So he finds the Madison all right, and comes down her to the Forks. And
there--July 27th, wasn't it, the _Journal_ says?--he finds Lewis and all
eight of the canoes and all of the folks, in camp a mile above the
Forks, just as easy and as natural as if they hadn't ever known anything
except just this country here. Of course, they had met almost every day,
but not for two days now.

"By that time they had their camp exactly on the spot where that Indian
girl had been captured by the Minnetarees six or eight years earlier.
She'd had a long walk, both ways! But she was glad to get back home!
Nary Indian, though now it was getting time for all the Divide Indians
to head down the river, over the two trails, to the Falls, where the
buffalo were."

"That's a story, Billy!" said Jesse. Billy stopped, abashed, forgetting
how enthusiasm had carried him on.

"Go ahead," said Uncle Dick.

"Well, you see, I read all about it all, and I get all het up, even
now," said Billy; "me raised right in here, and all."

"No apologies, Billy. Go on."

"Well then, by now Clark, he was right nigh all in. His feet was full of
thorns and he had a boil on his ankle, and he'd got a fever from
drinking cold water when he was hot--or that's how he figured it.
Nothing had stopped him till now. But now he comes in and throws down on
a robe, and he says, 'Partner, I'm all in. I haven't found a Indian. But
I allow that's the branch to follow.'

"He points up the Jefferson. Maybe the Indian girl said so, too, but I
think they'd have taken the Jefferson, anyhow. They all agreed on that.

"Now I've heard that the Indian girl kept pointing south and saying that
over that divide--that would be over the Raynolds Pass--was water that
led to the ocean. I don't know where they get that. Some say the Indian
girl went up the Madison with Clark. She didn't; she was with Lewis at
the boats all the time. Some say that Clark got as far south as the
canyon of the Madison, northwest of the Yellowstone Park. He didn't and
couldn't. Even if he did and was alone, that wouldn't have led him over
Raynolds Pass. That's a hundred miles, pretty near.

"I wonder what would have happened to them people, now, if they all had
picked the wrong branch and gone up the Madison? If they'd got on
Henry's Lake, which is the head of one arm of the Snake, and had got
started on the Snake waters--good night! We'd never have heard of the